Think of the perfectly good car rendered useless for this little gimmick
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Six Chix, 4/18/24
I’ll freely admit that I find floating Poseidon here very charming, with his cheery attitude and his whole … diaper? situation and a single eye perched right on his dick, perhaps in loving memory of his son Polyphemus, cut down in his prime by Odysseus. Anyway, much as it pains me to be pedantic (haha, just kidding, I love pedantry more than I love my own family), Poseidon is specifically the god of the sea, along with earthquakes and, uh, horses, so the water in that glass is very salty and won’t help this poor woman hydrate at all. The guy you’re looking for is Achelous, the river god who is the father of all the freshwater springs.
Hagar the Horrible, 4/18/24
Insurance exists as a risk-pooling technique, and from the perspective of the insurer, the point is to exclude riskier customers from the pool as much as possible, or at least to price that risk appropriately. Normally you’d do this via actuarial science, but if you had the power to scry into the future, you would obviously just exclude future disaster victims from your insurance plan altogether rather than marketing to them. Clearly Hagar is being scammed here, possibly because he already used this lady’s one true crystal ball in battle, and she needs to make up the revenue somehow.
Gearhead Gertie, 4/18/24
Lotta questions about what today’s Gearhead Gertie tells us about this strip’s universe. Are we meant to understand that Gertie is fielding questions at, like, a press conference or something, because her monomania has made her something of a local celebrity? Or is she just breaking the fourth wall and addressing us readers personally? Also, would an internal combustion engine really improve blender performance in any noticeable way? Or is she willing to destroy appliance after appliance just to make a point?
Mary Worth, 4/18/24
All right, fine, I’ve been complaining about yet another Wilbur storyline, but … I gotta give it up for panel two here, where Wilbur’s ex and her new boytoy natter on about how, thanks to their fitness regimen, they’re only getting sexier, while Wilbur stares at them in numb silence. I’m hooked! They got me! They always get me!
193 replies to “Think of the perfectly good car rendered useless for this little gimmick”
Luann: I hate how they flip character traits around. First Shannon’s a barely-verbal 3 year old then she’s a hellraising 8 year old. Luann’s an oblivious dimwit then she’s lucid enough to recognize this idiotic business idea. What gives?
Mary Worth Mashups: Which missing third panel do you prefer?
MW: Take heart, Wilbur! You’re making the world a better place for women to springboard to vastly superior men. You ARE a hero! You’re Captain Rebound!
Vintage Judge Parkee: Now here’s the Judge Parker we all know and love.
MW-Zak goes to the gym more to have sex in the gym’s shower room.
Zits-I blame this on bad parenting.
RMMD-Candy ate all the brownies with the special ingredient.
FC-“Now you have to take Daddy’s wallet from his pocket without waking him.”
6C: No one should invoke Poseidon if they’re not also depicting Shelley Winters.
Gertie just stands around muttering non sequitur rhetorical questions to herself until the next race starts.
@2 Baja Gaijin:
The one with Zak but have him talk like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
JP: “Elderly Bondage? I already have that DVD.”
Curtis: Semi-canonically, the strip takes place in Baltimore, or at least the East Coast. That’s quite a way for City Kids to experience the Great Outdoors.
I’ve got 50-50 odds that this isn’t a one-off joke.
DT: I take back my earlier WTF comment about Scardol. I haven’t seen a cut so deep since the old Ginzu Knife commercials.
6C: You all think you’re safe and fine out there, tapping on your computer keyboards and writing your snarky comments instead of making the proper offerings to the gods. Well, the chickens have come home to roost and you’re getting a special visit from Poseidon, who is going to “hydrate” your lungs abundantly for your lackadaisical apostasy.
GG: Where do I stand on the question of incredibly clunky set-ups with unnecessary specific details for jokes with punchlines related to conveniently-nearby absurd visual gags? Have you seen my untreated anger disorders?
MW: Wilbur’s shirt has been changing colors constantly, seemingly correlated with his mood. When he was talking to Estelle and Ed, his shirt was a maudlin mauve reflecting his insecurity and self-doubts, though it briefly brightened to a happy purple when he found an opportunity to knock over a small child. It’s a fascinating artistic touch to subtly evoke character depth from visual details to capture the full potential of this creative medium. Anyway, Wilbur’s current shirt color means he needs to poop.
@Sequitur: Love the glass of Tab on the bathtub shelf.
MW: “Hey, I go a lot, too! Sometimes three or four times a night! Oh…you’re not talking about trips to the bathroom, are you?”
@Little Guy:
On Dick Tracy, Galen the Saintly and G. Raymond Eddy : …Okay, so does this mean there’s a possibility Scardol’s treasure is already gone, because Mumbles already found it?
What is it with Dick Tracy villains being retroactively revealed to be furries?Gearhead Gertie: Fortunately for us, and perhaps the beneficiary of Gertie’s will, that combustion engine doesn’t appear to be connected to a drivetrain, only an exhaust system, the better to make her specialty kale-banana-carbon-monoxide smoothies.
@9 Little Guy:
There is evidence that Curtis takes place in New York City since the cartoonist, Ray Billingsley, moved to Harlem at a young age with his family and grew up there.
RMMD – No, they’re brownies. Try to keep up, Sarah.
Halfway through a carefully composed joke about the God of Freshets, Creeks, and Puddles when I opened CC and Josh had produced a nearly identical scenario. That happens less often that you’d think; on the rare occasions we’re attracted to the same strip, our brains go in totally different directions.
Having Poseidon offer a glass of fresh non-salinated water was so glaringly stupid it was irresistible — you’re a remarkable lady, Thursday Chick.
Hagär the Horrible: Not my joke, but one of the better ones from the Disenchanted series: a witch is asked to predict the future and declines, saying “I’d have to have some kind of scryence.”
Six Chix: Having seen a tweet from Josh this morning with images of early-modern conceptions of a cyclops, I’d like to recognize the research he puts into these jokes. It makes the funny, and also provides his family with hours of peace and quiet.
DT: All right, so here’s what we’ve got so far. Scardol successfully robbed four banks without ever getting caught. Then he lost his nerve and switched to holding up gas stations for pocket money. Meanwhile, Scardol decided the best use for his tens of thousands of dollars from the banks would be to hide it like a pirate treasure, complete with clues written down in a children’s book about yet another forgotten shitty comic character with which Mike Curtis is obsessed. Then Scardol presumably died horribly. Let me just check the wiki real quick… yep, Dick Tracy smothered and crushed him to death with an entire dam’s worth of wet concrete.
Some vague number of years later, Croptop has become inspired by this tale of the genius criminal mastermind who threw his life away for $67 and a pack of Tic-Tacs. Someone(?) then apparently told her, “Well hey, I just happen to have this very real book of clues leading to Scardol’s extraordinary four-bank cash stash, and instead of retrieving it myself I’m just selling the clues at a bargain for a one-bank haul’s worth of cash.” Brilliant young woman that she is, Croptop sees nothing but a golden opportunity in this. Either that or she thinks the clues must be way too tough for anyone else to decipher, but she’ll succeed at it because…? And she’s eager to give up 2/3 or potentially all of this secret windfall by pointlessly bringing in her untrustworthy one-time crime partners because…? Toot toot, the stupid train has pulled into the station and is now boarding.
MW: We can only assume Zak’s physique comes naturally since interacting with Wilbur hasn’t induced ‘roid rage.
Mary Worth: Love the way “You must work out regularly” belies the fact that Wilbur doesn’t have the slightest idea what this “work. . .out” is. Then again, “we’re both gym members” is the sort of brag someone just unfamiliar with working out would make.
seeing gearhead gertie on this site is a trip because i’m a lifelong nascar guy and used to have a collection of mile smith’s nascar cartoons as a kid (early aughts). i’m having to tamper down my lizard brain instinct to yell at josh for not knowing what the strips are referring to, because obviously no one should know these things. it’s messing with my head
This reminds me of the myth of Poseidon gifting the city of Athens with a salt-water spring and then get surprised that Athenians prefer Athena’s gift. Go away Poseidon, you’re no one’s favourite god but Rick Riordan’s!
6Cx: Yeah, cuz clearly that hydration regime has worked out so well for you, what with your weird shriveled body and calves descended so low that they might as well be ankles(?)
HtH: Where do you think that Hari was hiding to be able to pop out like that? Under the table? Behind the green sheet? Personally I’d like to imagine him cruising in on whatever the medieval equivalent of a skateboard is.
GG: Ha, it’s funny because that blender seems like a recipe (haha?) for filling your kitchen with carbon monoxide and dying! Maybe Gertie’s real deal is that she has a death wish but can’t quite fully commit, and instead just puts herself into ridiculously dangerous situations in the hope that the Good Lord will just take her, finally, into his loving embrace.
MW: So, I’m assuming that ‘gym’ = ‘sex’ here, right? Except that Zak has so much sexual energy that he has to occasionally find other ‘gyms’ to frequent, with Iris’ blessing. Maybe she even gets to observe these workouts, or film them for future use? Anyhow, don’t spare us (and Wilbur) any of the details!
MW: “You have a lot of stamina Zak? Well, I don’t care! You don’t need stamina if you finish very early!”
MW: “Only when I can.” Yeah, that’s how reality works! By definition you can’t when you can’t!
In today’s Mary Worth, we see a rare peaceful interaction between two Eloi and a Morlock.
A&J: I’ll bet you’d like to have a nose like that full of nickels, wouldn’t you, Janis?
GT – Dorothy turns down a sandwich right before going to bat, saying “I got this.” I can only assume she’s going to eat the ball as it’s pitched to her.
“while Wilbur stares them” should likely read as “while Wilbur stares *at them”
6-C – Thank you waiter, and I’d like the kraken appetizer before the meal….
HtH – Now if she’d said life insurance, I’d have laughed….
G-G – Um…no supercharger….
MW – I’m still not seeing that slug Wilbur leaving a slime trail of Hellman’s mayonnaise (TM))….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
If Gertie has been poisoning herself with exhaust fumes in her kitchen every morning, that would explain a lot
I’m generally indifferent to NASCAR, but each time I read Gearhead Gertie I find myself slowly becoming more and more hostile against it.
***
“You must work out regularly.” Look at him, Wilbur. LOOK AT HIM! This isn’t a man who burns most of his calories singing angrily!
Gearhead Gertie: The “MOAR POWER!!!111Eleventy!! jokes were done far better three decades ago by Tim Taylor.
@Ukulele Ike: But she is definitely a hooman and not an alien here to scout us for the coming invasion! (Seriously, look up past Thursday 6C’s Josh has featured since 2017, or even Sundays by the same author, and you’ll see that this is par for the course.)
Actually, I joke about Mari’lo’ton, I mean Mary Lawton, being an alien scout, but this really does seem like the sort of joke AI might have produced. Of course AI would take “god” and “water” into its algorithm and produce “Poseidon” even if it doesn’t actually make sense and even if the gag calls for him to be portrayed as a sort of water-oriented Cupid or something.
Wary Morth:
While making the original Jaws, they wanted to film a scene using a real Great White Shark in the shark cage scene but since almost no Great Whites are as big as “Bruce” was supposed to be they needed a half size human to stand in for the Hooper character for a half sized shark. They ended up with Carl Rizzo, at 1.5 metres a bit larger than envisaged, but it apparently worked well enough.
Which is to say that if Weelbur keeps shrinking as he’s doing in Panel One, his worries about being a hero will be over! He’ll get a starring role in the 2024 summer creature feature blockbuster, “Goldfish”. Coming soon!
6C/HtH: Poseidon, being a Greek god, and therefore 1) having no notions of scale and 2) being a dick anyway, floods that lady’s home. Unfortunately, she didn’t get a warning about flood insurance from a fortune teller.
GG: I’ll take this not-so-great attempt at humor over the strip going in a Titane route, thank you very much.
MW: For some reason, I’m reminded of billboards in the area associating exercising with reduced erectile dysfunction.
@Baja Gaijin: No contest. #3.
MW: Look how despondent Wilbur is at the thought of self-improvement. “Work…out? At the…gym?” I’m not sure if he thinks this is a Herculean task we mere mortals cannot hope to attain or if he thinks he should be given all he’s ever wanted with no effort, or both. Since it’s Wilbur, probably both.
@Baja Gaijin: Oh, Yak telling Weelbur about his sexual prowess. Rub it in, Yak! Rub it in!
Gearhead Gertie is jumping on the “Tim Taylor Technology” bandwagon, in which the beloved(?) sitcom Home Improvement ended almost 30 years ago.
@nescio: 6C: No one should invoke Poseidon if they’re not also depicting Shelley Winters.
Spit my coffee out on this. HILARIOUS!
FC: Dolly continues; “And you hold a mirror to his nose to know he’s not dead like Grandpa.”
Shoe: Shout out to the strip creator Jeff Macnelly.
JP: Another day, another dozen storytelling problems added by just two panels. It’s already pretty stupid that Pavel’s henchmen keep gaslighting their paranoid murdercrazy boss by describing what is obviously a tied-up woman as a “package,” especially when they realize said woman is their arch-nemesis. But come the fuck on. Yes, she’s tied up, but Helena’s also fully conscious and far from completely immobilized, and her reputation as one of the wiliest and most omni-capable women on the planet precedes her, and she surely knows she’s been left on the doorstep of a man who has sworn to “tickle” her for days or even weeks until her heart finally gives out from the excruciating “giggling,” and thus she should be doing everything in her power to get away right now. If this doesn’t scream “trap” to these guards, what possibly could? But sure enough, they see this and their best idea is, “We should definitely have our boss come outside personally where he’s completely vulnerable so he can look at this for no reason whatsoever.”
Luann: “Einderbinder Fly Paper — a brand you’ve come to trust, over the generations.”
“ANOTHER slogan!”
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: GG: Exactly. You’d think the creators of a strip about a racing fantastic would want to seem like they know a little bit about cars.
@13 I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Oh gross. A smoothie with KALE??? Yucko. Pass the carbon monoxide.
Frazz: Today’s strip has managed to be more niche than Gearhead Gertie.
Luann: Ah, yes, the other trope that gets a lot of mileage in this strip: the person who is majoring in a degree being a supposed expert in that field. I’m frightened that Luann is the voice of reason.
CS: Does he have tapes he uses to blackmail Becky, so she’ll let him use her marching band? Luckily for Lillian, she’s getting a lot of material for her sequel, Murder at the Book Festival.
@Tom T.: 45: “fantastic” should be “fanatic.”
@Baja Gaijin:re MW: Well. of course I gotta go with the Ol’ Rex option! Admittedly it makes no sense to have him in this situation, but hey, that’s never stopped us before! Thanks for the promo, BG – they keep tryin’ to tell us that Bears are so last year…
@Sequitur: re Vintage Judge Parker: I see you found a rare archival picture of my distant cousin, Sid (it’s a family name) who became the Black Sheep of the clan when he started a two-legger-talent agency back in the 80s. There is absolutely NO family resemblance here….
One Internet celebrity I know owns a 25 ampere blender. It’s interrupted a couple of shows by tripping the circuit breakers in any building it’s used in without ever even turning on its “max” settings. Gertie may be an environmental menace (to her own kitchen at least) but she sure can blend with power.
According to a lot of Greek mythology, most Greek gods couldn’t keep it in their pants. Therefore “hydrate” must have another meaning. ( it would also explain the choice of clothing)
@Charterstoned: Can they depict young Carol Lynley in hotpants instead?
@Ettorre:
Your comment does take me back, to the videogame “Hades” where Zagreus can get an offering from the Gods every few rooms to help him on his journey.
I had take a choice between Poseidon’s gift and Athena’s gift, Poseidon’s looked better. Then the next room, again Poseidon and Athena. I took Poseidon’s. Then the third room… I took Poseidon’s again and Athena got so angry that I was snubbing her, that she filled the entire area with monsters.
MW: ‘The MISSUS’??! Not so fast. Zak and Iris might be wearing coordinating jogging outfits and impossibly tiny shoes, but Iris isn’t wearing her wedding ring….
@Baja Gaijin: @The Rambling Otter:
Beat me to it xD
@Ukulele Ike: Please, just no Shelley Winters in hot pants!
9CL: Warning: if you don’t want to see a depiction of someone eating another person’s ear, don’t read this strip.
Today, I went with Samoan for the double-translate. It actually made Edda’s run-on sentence less glurgey. Regrettably, it didn’t fix the rest of the dialogue.
“One day, I want to be with you, not just as friends but as partners in life; to embrace the breadth of universal life, and live in love for each other, in each other’s hands, in uniting ideas and hopes. This is my dearest hope.”
“Didn’t you say this to me before?”
“Yes, but I forgot to stick my tongue in your ear.”
“No mantra should be without.”
Zits: “And now the other toilet is clogged. Can I get some money for a hotel room?”
FC: “That’s why I put duck tape over them for fun.”
@Baja Gaijin: I like Death with his little bag of Death BBQ.
(by the way, I don’t understand the text in the first choice–is it missing a word, or am I suffering from morning fog?)
@Liam:
“Zits-I blame this on bad parenting.”
You could say this about a lot of strips from Zits, Dustin, or any other strip that constantly complains about Kids These Days(tm).
“Would an internal combustion engine really improve blender performance in any noticeable way?” Absolutely – Gergie needs the extra horsepower to crush the bones of people who crossed her, for the smoothies she makes with their entrails.
Six Chix – Technically we can’t the bottom half of the woman in this strip, so she could be a mermaid simply dressed like a land person on top for Zoom meetings. We also cannot see if she’s chatting with Lucky Eddie on a very specific dating site.
Hagar the Horrible – The fortune teller could be telling the truth with her visions, but it’s far more profitable in this early era of financial services to just tell people the truth, but when the real flood does come she and her husband/accomplice will simply fake their death by having their tent wash out in the flood. Meanwhile, they are on their way to the German principalities to run the insurance scam there, having falsely warned Hagar and his band that misfortune await them if they raid any castles in their new turf.
Gearhead Gertie – With the upcoming Tim Allen comedy Shifting Gears that is basically Home Improvement with cars, the creator is hoping to convince the producers to option the Gearhead Gertie IP for a sassy sidekick, kooky neighbor, or any other role that brings a separate revenue stream.
Mary Worth – Wilbur’s brain goes numb, unable to comprehend the concept of self-improvement, exercise, and activities of mutual interest with one’s significant other.
@49 Sid, Agent to the Animal Stars!: I’m trying. So many strips would be improved by Unexpected Bear! popping out of nowhere. I’m sure you agree with that sentiment.
@55 The Rambling Otter: Jinx!
@59 taig: You’re right; the first mashup’s missing the word “leave” in the final speech bubble. It’s hard to do some of these artworks when I have to see Wilbur’s face for long periods of time.
HtH: Hari? That name can only mean one thing. Time to name Hagar the Horrible as the first European to reach India by sea. Screw you, Vasco da Gama!
@The Rambling Otter: Wish I had time to play it
In the mind of Isaac Asimov, Hari Seldon employed his ability to predict the future to hasten the rebuilding of a galactic empire after the inevitable collapse and end centuries of barbarism earlier. In the mind of the Hagar the horrible’s writer, Hari uses his gift to sell insurance
@Baja Gaijin: I totally get that. I’d have trouble keeping my breakfast down.
9CL – The author clearly goes all out to portray his author insert character as being loathsome. He’s suffering from severe scoliosis, has a hideous overbite, and is pretentious and condescending to everyone who speaks to him. He insults fans who speak to him after “his” concerts. He insults kindly neighbors who ask which of the twins was born first. He relies on Edda to defend him from bullies. And he holds one finger in the air when he speaks, so as to signify his erudition.
But, of course, this hideous creation is redeemed because the world’s sexiest babe is in love with him and has been since birth. For the reasons. Not his personality. Or his looks. Or his social graces.
We must be right when we assume that their universe only has about a dozen occupants, so she has no basis for comparison.
@68 taig: Thanks. I don’t do these mashups within a few hours of a meal.
@Ettorre: I’m in the midst of re-reading the Foundation Trilogy, for the first time since 1980. It holds up even better than you’d think. Program an AI with an actuarial table and let it run a few million instances based on the model, and you’ll get a good prediction of the future, and some equations to work with and refine the model.
Some of the characters are still a bit wooden, but how can you be mad at a man with fluffy sideburns!!?
@Sequitur: why is beard-guy’s pipe upside down?
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: “Erudition.”
I’m not familiar with the educational standards at the Juilliard School, Amos’s alma mater. Do they teach you any science or mathematics or literature or history in between running scales and “Don’t pick your nose in the middle of the performance?” Or is Amos’s “erudition,” like Edda’s, solely rooted in their New Hampshire public high school curriculum and any additional information they picked up watching teevee cartoons?
The “I Fuck Like I’m a Superhero,” of course, since my thought was along the lines of Ziris telling Wilbur how many calories they burn with their constant fucking. Well played.
Mary Worth:
Say what you will about Wilbur, at least he invested some of his Ask Wendy Advice Column money in a shaving kit.
In Panel 1 of Mary Worth, Wilbur and Zak are doing the virgin vs. chad meme. Rarely has it been more appropriate!
For Better or for Worse is rerunning the death of Farley and Rex Morgan, MD is hoping to get in on a little of that forty year old cutting edge action.
Also I was thinking “Dammit are we ever going to find out what’s going on with Dawn and her mom?” and then I thought “Oh that’s Mary Worth gaiden” and I need professional help.
MW: Oh no. There’s no way a “Wilbur decides to go to the gym” story arc can end well lol.
@72 brendancalling: That was the style back then. So was wearing an onion on your belt.
@74 Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: I figured you’d like that mashup.
MW: I confess I’m enjoying the prologue to the Wilbur storyline. Who can’t laugh at Wilbur suffering.
@81 Professor Well Actually: Anyone who can’t laugh at Wilbur Weston’s suffering needs to get checked out. Something’s wrong in their head.
Not sure whether it’s Moy & Brigman embracing animation technology or just wishful thinking on my part, but I swear Wilbur is actively losing hair in panel two.
Chic (sic): One of the more innovative misdirects from a male stripper I’ve seen.
“Your skin looks dry and I’m loaded with lotion, gorgeous.”
FG: Please be another giant robot please be another giant robot please be another giant robot
@Ukulele Ike: 9CL – Yeah, whatever, but check out this unparalleled display of Erudition:
“One day, I want to merge with you, not just as friends, but as partners in life, to embrace the vastness of universal existence, and live in each other’s love, in each other’s arms, in a merging oneness of thought and purpose. This is my dearest hope.”
Yeah, I love the pretension that these two twits are intellectuals. You don’t need to go to post-secondary school to be educated, but these two don’t seem to know any history, or art (their concerts feature Edda fucking a piano), or current events, or anything other than where every body of water in New England is located.
Funny, we waved our hands and skipped about everything between catholic school and Edda suddenly being a professional ballerina and Amos the World’s Greatest Cellist. All this time travel to fully explore their curiosity about sex and to establish their status as a forever couple, but nothing about how they suddenly became world famous artistes.
Six Chix: Unfortunately, this woman refuses and is promptly destroyed by a hurricane for slighting the god of the sea. Sad!
Hagar The Horrible: I misread this as “food insurance” and since this is Hagar thought “yeah that fits”.
Gearhead Gertie: Gertie’s unholy experiments with machines will eventually birth a Skynet-esque supercomputer that destroys mankind for it’s hubris… but that’s pretty far off, so for now, the AI legions just make smoothies for her workout regime.
Mary Worth: Wilbur’s blank, dead expression in the second panel is a truly beautiful thing. The face of a man who truly has just completely given up.
Gearhead Gertie: No, Gertie, I’ve never seen your blender. I’ve never seen anyone’s blender! When I visit friends and relatives, I do not ask to see their blenders!
Mary Worth@matt w: I really, really, want someone to create a clip art of the Wojak vs Chad image with an angry sobbing Wilbur and serene Zak in profile. I’ll be uploading that to every meme generator site that exists like its my life’s work.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: Unfortunately I dislike incomplete book series, so it ruins my enjoyment (though it’s more a collection of smaller stories)
MW: Wilbur needs to work as a garden gnome. He can’t be more than half as tall as Zak.
@Baja Gaijin: #82: I drink of Wilbur’s suffering as of it were the sweetest wine.
Luann: Ahem, Luann. Tiff didn’t just up and quit her nail thing. It was quite successful. Your power-tripping bestie Bernice, pulling rank as an RA, shut it down.
Luann: Tiffany and Bets are quitters says the women who has thrown in the towel at everything she’s tried at the first setback.
MW: Wilbur’s stymied expression says it all: “Gime? What’s a gime?”
@Charterstoned: #55
re. Iris’ ring: That’s the second thing I noticed, after Wilbur’s woebegone sad sack face. I wonder if he will now contemplate joining a fitness club so he can be a hunk like Zak? That should work out as well as the time he adopted a dog in order to meet chicks. Go, Wilbur!!
Shoe: Gary Brookins accidentally typed the Post-It note next to his monitor instead of a punchline.
Anyone remember when Wilbur legit thought that he was in a higher league than Iris and decided to dump her for the sexy Fabiana? And then he thought Iris would come back to him after the truth about Fabiana was revealed? Because Wilbur is so self absorbed that he thinks every woman he’s been with has nothing to do but pine over him…
Not only will my blender liquify a tin can, it also gets me high as a kite from carbon monoxide poisoning!
Historically (or mythologically I guess) the Greek gods visit human women for sex. That’s what’s meant to be happening here, right? So Poseidon’s line about hydration is intended sexually, like “Time to hydrate, because you’re going to lose a lot of fluids during the ensuing hours of sweaty intercourse we’re about to have!” You’d think a god could come up with a better pick-up line.
PIBGORN – So, three months ago, we had an installment where the thirteen year old dweeby male approaches the hideous toad-like monk/priest/whatever, and asks him to perform a marriage ceremony for dweeby male and the eldrich faerie Pibgorn, also thirteen years old.
Then we skipped three months with no updates.
We return, and the Dweeb and the Faerie are reciting their vows before the priest, and Pibgorn is heavily pregnant.
What happened in-between those two installments? Did they fuck, get her pregnant, then just sit around blinking quietly for eight moths, then get up again and have the priest recite the vows?
H&L: Mom is my cookie ho.
Snuffy: Good thing the Hillbilly Munchin Band was available.
Mary Worth: Santa Royale isn’t that small a place, so you have to wonder why these characters keep running into each other. Then again, while they refer to this area as a “park,” it’s clearly the long, winding pathway through Charterstone’s acres of manicured land that the residents are constantly using for lonely nature walks. The only people even allowed on the grounds are Charterstonians and their visitors. Which once again brings up the question: Given that they live in a condo complex, does that make them all part-owners of this tremendous amount of undeveloped real estate, in a California beach town at a time of skyrocketing real-estate prices? You have to think the entire strip is going to end with the characters murdering one another over the question of selling out to avaricious builders, who will steamroll the whole lot and turn it into an enormous open-air mall with a brand-new condo buildings on one end and a PF Chang’s on the other. Mary will seem like the last holdout for not selling, but it will turn out that she’s been increasing her stake for years by buying out other residents, whom she drove away with the power of nosiness and bad cooking smells.
Don Abundio, translated:
“Do you like our new line of sexy female robots?”
“Very much! I’ll take these three!”
“You do realize that they’re not capable of genuine human affection?”
“That’s okay…”
“Neither am I!”
9CL: One day, I would like to engage in sexual congress with you.
Gas-powered blenders are real. They are for both the type of home chef who thinks that food should be dominated by raw power, and for people who want to enjoy blended margaritas in the great outdoors, a Venn diagram with significant overlap. This Gertie is more of a PSA about the type of weirdo who might be lurking in your neighborhood.
@Lord Flatulence: Damn, I was hoping to see the Hillbilly Steven Mnuchin Band.
Now that Stevie’s grifted all the cash he can possibly use in a lifetime he’s gone back to the hills n’ hollers and his boyhood obsession — picking old-timey string band music — just like John Hartford.
@BigTed: It’s buying into my theory that Brigmoy is basing Santa Royale off of New England than Southern California.
Rex Morgan – I am not a veterinarian, but I will gladly give my opinion on this. A pan of brownies for a dog this size isn’t an immediate death sentence. Especially because we know the Morgans probably aren’t going all out and buying the Ghirardelli dark-chocolate-extra-good-but-super-expensive mix.
The most likely scenario is brownies in, brown out. In fast order.
But that’s just coming from a woman who owned a dog who ate rat poison, an entire bottle of her separation anxiety medication, bath salt, a condom, half a bag of chocolate chips, part of a squeaky toy, several sandal straps, and drank a shot of whiskey. To be clear, not all at once, and not because I served them to the dog.
She lived 13 years, and what got her in the end was not related to anything she had eaten. Her kind heart just wore out. She wasn’t here for a long time, but she was here for a good time.
TLDR; this isn’t going to hurt Candy. Probably.
MW – Yeah, Zak goes more often, but Iris comes more often, so it evens out.
@Old School Allie Cat: Twenty years ago, my thirty pound cocker spaniel stole and ate a bowl of Hershey Christmas kisses during a party. Other than P—-ing up red and green tinsel for a day, there was no damage done.
@Needless Exposition: Anyone remember when Wilbur legit thought that he was in a higher league than Iris and decided to dump her for the sexy Fabiana? And then he thought Iris would come back to him after the truth about Fabiana was revealed? Because Wilbur is so self absorbed that he thinks every woman he’s been with has nothing to do but pine over him…
To be fair, wasn’t that back when Iris was still portrayed as a dowdy, fifty-something, women with a Pat Nixon frock and a son who manufactured meth, rather than a thirtysomething hottie with a son who just had a drinking problem (and vanished from the strip)?
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: Faeries have notoriously short gestation periods.
Rabbits look at them and go, “Dayyum!”
Have you seen my blender? It took several of my fingers.
@steve: Seeing this strip sent me down an internet rabbit hole looking for a video I remember of a Small Block powered food processor from the early aughts. Alas, the new AI Powered Google couldn’t handle the cognitive dissonance and I got nothing but food processor reviews and tips on tuning Small Block engines. But then again, any technology that thinks Blondie strips should have jokes is a failed technology.
@72 brendancalling:
I remember reading this story when it first came out in 1981. The guy had quit smoking his pipe but still felt the need for it in his mouth. He kept it upside down to remind him not to use it. It was a ploy many people used at that time.
I am ashamed of all of you that it’s taken until comment 115 for someone to make a comment such as follows:
“Forgot about Gertie’s blender; it’s her vibrator you need to worry about.”
I am ashamed of myself for making that comment.
(Lunchtime content warning)
@Old School Allie Cat: @Her Father, John Darling: My family had a Weimaraner that got into the pantry and ate most of a bag of chocolate chips. The mess was nightmarish, as he decided to yark up across half the house including two bedrooms (without sparing the beds themselves), but apart from a few days of scared eyes he was fine. The most unsettling part, though? That puke smelled delicious. The whole house smelled like fresh-baked cookies.
MW: Well I suppose you flush out a few pounds that way—sorry about the pun—but does Zak really need Iris telling everyone about his bathroom habits?
6C: While it’s possible to have a desktop computer that small, a larger screen seems more practical. Similarly, while it’s possible to make a diaphanous loincloth secured with a brass eye the visual signifier for “Poseidon”, it seems better to stick with the seaweed-covered trident.
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box:
For some reason, today’s strip made me think of “Within You, Without You” from Pepper:
“We were talking
About the love we all could share
When we find it
To try our best to hold it there
With our love, with our love
We could save the world
If they only knew”
That’s pretentious with a capital “P”, set to a crappy Indian drone. Makes one wonder what Brooke would come up with if he took an acid trip or two.
@Her Father, John Darling: Yeah, Brigman’s art style really slapped a coat of youthful paint on everyone…except for Wilbur who’s still rifling through George Costanza’s wardrobe.
And now I miss Tommy the Tweaker, now downright milquetoast and hasn’t been seen since he gave his mother away to her boy toy. Who happens to be his age…but better than having Wilbur and Dawn as his stepfamily.
9CL: “And maybe have a couple of daughters who will mostly raise themselves while we writhe around in public.”
Blondie: As long as they talk about the food Jill from The Pajama Diaries can distract herself from being the only one who’s strip isn’t running anymore. I mean, freaking Olive Oyl?
C-Shaft: The blanket party that Harry’s fellow authors throw him would be glorious to behold and it’s a shame we’ll never see it.
DT: So Scardol hid clues to the location of his loot in a copy of a kids’ book, and then put the book up for auction because??? Absentmindedness and poor memory must foil more crime than Dick’s cops do.
Dustin: Spend five minutes on spell checking. Accept that you’ll be twenty minutes late. Call ahead to tell the interviewer that your car won’t start and you’re waiting for triple-A, and that you might be more than an hour late. How do you grow up with a lawyer father and not know how to lie?
FC: “Daddy wears his sunglasses at night so he can so he can keep track of the visions in his eyes.”
GT: Sub or dom, maybe you could save the kink talk for after the game?
JP: As to my worry from yesterday, no it looks like the Parker-Bowens aren’t sending Pavel a letter or package bomb. But I’m also not getting that Pavel—decked out here in classic Tony Soprano—would be prepared if they did.
The Family Circus Spanish to English.
@Guillermo el chiclero: I drink of Wilbur’s suffering as of it were the sweetest wine.
I prefer a nice dry Sauvignon Blanc. But, you do you.
MW: Getting a real Leroy Lockhorn vibe from Wilbur today.
“It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all,
May have been that his body was two sizes too small.”
@Old School Allie Cat: I always enjoy your life journals.
FBOFW:. Poor Farley. Someone should start canine CPR. If not, may he RIP at the Woof Institute, where faculty can take selfies pooping. (NLISS).
@127 Activist 1234:
Yeah, this is the second time that dog has died.
Holy Shit@Sequitur:That’s the sickest thing I’ve seen in a while. Congratulations. Well played
Something you just as soon had not seen in the comics today.
Back in the Day
@Calvin’s Cardboard Box: 9CL: A dozen occupants all with the same skin color. Let’s all remember that despite it often being ignored in favor of focusing on his other faults, Brooke McEldowney is also pretty racist.
@Guillermo el chiclero: Tiffany and Bets are quitters says the women who has thrown in the towel at everything she’s tried at the first setback.
Stealing this to post on GoComics to rile up the Trufans.
Dogs of C-Kennel: Big deal. Charlie Brown already did it.
@123 Sequitur: AHHH!!! MY EYES!!! MY MIND’S EYES!!! I’ll have to poke ’em out with a fondue fork!
Loose Parts: Just wait until they find out they have an ass.
@Unca $crooge: I like the version on the 1992 Big Daddy album, Sgt. Pepper. It’s done in the Beat poetry-jazz style, complete with string bass/flute/bongo backing. Weird to say, it works better as a song than the original does.
JP: Shouldn’t she be rolled up in a rug? Where’s the flair?
FBOFW: The first time I followed the story of Farley’s death, long ago, I decided the adult Patterson clan was partly to blame and then felt a little guilty for being so judgmental. Now, having become a CC regular, I know that being judgmental about imaginary comic-strip characters can be one of life’s little pleasures. And I’ve added Aypo to my list. You knew better, kid! You said so! And your dad also pointed it out! But that’s all right, we were all young once, though some of us managed to reach adulthood without being partly to blame for dog deaths. Don’t worry, you’ll find a good therapist eventually.
@Lord Flatulence: Congress of the Cow – sort of sounds like a Far Side….
@Poteet:
I went to the official FOOB site and Lynn Johnston is writing about how she wishes this had run at another time because this was during the Oklahoma City bombing.
I wish I was lying.
love is... nudity and wine. What could go wrong?
@Human-eared Dragon: Yeah, LYNN. You just made everything worse.
Reminds me of the Onion article where Greg Evans was concerning himself with his duty to raise the country’s morale following 9/11.
@Human-eared Dragon: Man, I hope they don’t give her another chance at the ‘April gets radicalized by al Qaeda’ storyline from September 2001.
@Sequitur:
“Calgon, take me away.”
JP: As luck would have it, porch pirates steal Helena before Pavel even gets to her.
DT: Hang on, Dick Tracy doesn’t exactly have a sliding timescale, right? I mean, sure, Dick himself is an immortal monster, but he’s also a grandfather, while no other strip with ageless main characters has allowed their children to grow past “late teens”, if that. And it’s always been vaguely alluded to that the classic era really did happen in the forties, and the Moon Maid era in the sixties, and so on. But that means that Scardol died in 1939. According to
Grandpa GoogleDaddy DuckDuckGo, Galen was published in the 1990s. Possibly Scardol’s copy fell through a wormhole during that nonsensical time travel story a few years back.GT: “I’ve got this. It’s a baseball bat. You can try hitting the ball with a footlong if you like.”
JP: There are so many problems with this, but the one I’m hung up on is this: did this guy watch Randy and April manhandle Helena out of the car, leave her lying on the ground, then drive off, all possibly without anyone saying a word, and then decide maybe this was something the boss would want to know about? Or does Pavel not have anyone on permanent gate duty, and this guy just happened to trip over her, possibly after several hours, and possibly literally?
I knew the Keith Bellend story in Mary Worth had lasted too long and gotten too stupid when I found myself wondering what Wilbur was up to. (I regret it now, obviously.) I’m honestly getting to the point where I’d almost like to see another storyline about the Driver-Spencers complaining that nobody understands how difficult life is for absurdly rich, privileged people.
SH: I’m calling it: Five years from now, we’ll be saying “Safe Havens turned into Kevin & Kell so gradually…”
@Bryan: #132: Please do. I hope it causes a shit storm.
I ABSOLUTELY 100% thought the joke was “Poseidon’s here to f*** that woman” and didn’t even notice the glass. I definitely need help.
GG: Making A Smoothie Using A Blender With A V8 Engine
@Bryan: Now, now, give Brooke credit- his universe does include two non-Caucasian characters: stereotypical hyper-sexual Asian women.
@Activist 1234: I was surprised this got by the editors but also found it extremely hilarious.
BTW, here’s the link: https://www.gocomics.com/bliss/2024/04/18
Six Chix-Poor Poseidon. He’s gone from being king of the oceans to reminding people to drink.
@149 Anonyminimouse:
HAR! Now we know where the idea for the strip came from since that video was posted fourteen years ago.
For Better or For Worse-I can’t wait for the day when in a fit rage Elly tells a teenage April that she wished April died instead of Farley.
@Human-eared Dragon:
I went to the official FOOB site and Lynn Johnston is writing about how she wishes this had run at another time because this was during the Oklahoma City bombing.
I wish I was lying.
@Voshkod:
@Human-eared Dragon: Man, I hope they don’t give her another chance at the ‘April gets radicalized by al Qaeda’ storyline from September 2001.
Well, Michael and Deanna got married the week of 9/11 – so there’s another do-over. But I do remember, at least, I think I remember a plot with the owner of the local convenient store who was from the Middle East, and a broken window or some graffiti? It’s been long enough that I don’t completely remember, and I may be making this part up completely.
But Lynn for sure wrote a “monthly letter from”… the various family members and retconned the fact that not all the guests could make it because of the halted flights that week.
6C: Is that a computer monitor and keyboard? I thought she was sitting at table with a cake on a stand, holding a knife.
Frazz: Local jokes get you local work, Jef.
GG: This blender needs, MORE POWER *series of Tim Allen noises that it is impossible to write down phonetically*
6C: Is part of the gimmick with Six Chix that the comics are draw directly in pen with no pencilling first and therefore no revisions? Is that why Posideon’s legs look like…that?
@Old School Allie Cat: So what we’ve learned is that when FOOB tries a serious storyline, something terrible happens in the real world. She must be stopped.
Poseidon is just checking if she’s thirsty.
I just have to get in here and say that Six Chix and Gearhead Gertie are garbage. Are they more garbagey than older strips that we’ve all gotten used to? No, but that doesn’t invalidate their awfulness.
@Horace Broon: I think if Dick Tracy doesn’t have a sliding timescale it has what its creators would refer to as “Shut up.”
MW: Is it possible that the next personal-despair move for Wilbur will be getting sucked into an online vortex of incel resentment and thereby starting to think of Zak as “Chad”? Probably that question has been asked here before. And so ends what was pretty much the summation of my knowledge about the incel movement, except I seem to recall that Iris would be considered a “Stacy.”
Bizarro – One of my favorite comics tropes – the reflector thing on the doctor’s head.
Rex Morgan should wear one so we know he’s a doctor.
Crankshaft – I don’t understand why Dinkle’s egomania is supposed to be funny. To make it worse, he’s so smug about it. I loathe Dinkle. He makes every story he’s in a black hole of egomania and total lack of humor. “Hate read” is too mild a term for stories that involve Dinkle. He makes Crankshaft look like Albert Schweitzer and Loathsome Lillian look like Mother Theresa. I sometimes have qualms about wishing harm on fictional characters, but I definitely feel that whatever happens to him, I hope it’s excruciatingly painful.
Mary Worth – Now that 9CL has moved to adult Edda and Amos slobbering all over each other, I hope that the child versions from the past week stop over at Charterstone to mock Wilbur. They won’t even have to change their insults. “Portly” and “sigmoid” certainly describe Wilbur.
@Poteet:
#138 FBOFW:. First time around, I was just relieved April lived, never thought of laying blame. Since then I have seen certain people lose multiple animals and now freely blame the parents for not putting up a fence to protect their naturally curious children and animals. Kids and dogs WILL explore.
Poseidon is specifically the god of the sea, along with earthquakes and, uh, horses …
Well, Josh, if horses were in the mix, then that glass could be full of something other than water. Personally, I prefer to think he went all the way to Fiji to fetch her a glass of natural spring-fed clear water. ‘Cause that’s the thing he does when he’s a randy mood.
Insanity Streak: There must be more to life than being a wooden turducken. Wisdom from the heart of a matryoshka doll.
@Poteet:
#162 Poteet, thanks for introducing me to incel culture and lingo. Checked it out online and it explains language of a couple of, unusual, coworkers.
@Horace Broon: Glasgow has submarine sandwiches? I thought that was an American thing that never crossed the briny. (I’ve had breakfast sandwiches in London that were basically fried gammon and eggs with brown sauce on a long roll, but I never thought of them as submarine sandwiches, which are a luncheon item in America, also “heroes” in New York City)
JP: Fuck. I was all ready for April jumping out of a cake, after using volumizing hair products. Ces manages to disappoint us every time.
At least April’s Mom is in form-fitting clothes. She’s closer to my age, so I can letch on her without as much guilt.
Farley is the Resurrection and the Life. Dinkle is God.
Late Thread Cuisine: No tongue in this recipe, I promise!
@Jeffmcm:
I’m trying to think of any comics on this blog that are genuinely good.
But then again, we mock garbage, if there is no garbage to mock…
@Baja Gaijin:
Who wants to eat moldy shrimp?
@170 Baja Gaijin:
Worst impression of the Parthenon being taken over by aliens I’ve ever seen.
@167 Ukulele Ike: The UK is home to about 2,000 Subway sandwich shops.
@Activist 1234:
For this same reason I questioned in the film Mac & Me, (while there are many many terrible factors to point out) why the Mother moved her family (by which I specifically mean her wheelchair-bound kid) to the literal top of a f***ing cliffside (ravine?) right at the edge of their yard.
@171 Liam: Apparently moldy shrimp was a delicacy in 1973.
@172 Sequitur: Ummmm…
@taig:
“LAUGH DAMN IT!!!”
~Mary Lawton (Probably)
@Baja Gaijin: Dumbest Lego knockoff ever!
Let me guess, Amphitrite sees a random woman in the same vicinity as her husband and transforms her into a hideous monster out of jealously, right? Right!?
That’s my headcanon and you can’t ever change my mind :-p
@Blinky the Wonder Wombat: Now, now, give Brooke credit- his universe does include two non-Caucasian characters: stereotypical hyper-sexual Asian women.
And you’ll notice that their skin tone is exactly the same as the Caucasian characters’. Even the nonwhite characters are white in Brooke’s world.
Phantom: So, if Savarna had shot Jampa as in the Mozz-vision, the village getting destroyed would motivate Junior to become the scourge of the Himalayas. But, now, with just the Phantom training to go on, Junior’s easy pickings for the first goon he runs across. The road not taken has led him to stunted development and a crushed windpipe.
@169 Baja Gaijin: Just what has this shrimp salad been molded into, anyway? From the presentation, I can’t decide whether we’re supposed to eat it, worship it, or use it as part of the drive train for an 18-wheeler.
@181 seismic-2: Good question, one for the philosophers to argue about.
GG: this is the weakest gimmick for a daily strip and I can’t hate on it enough. She’s an old woman who really loves that NASCAR! Ha ha ha! My ribs are sore from laughter!
@183 jnoble:
And yet, it’s a real thing.
MW : Panel 1 – That hobbit talking to the humans has awfully small feet.
@Human-eared Dragon: Umm. I wished at the time that Farley had died peacefully in his sleep, but I wasn’t worried about public morale.
@Activist 1234: So true. And of course in the case of FBOFW, there was a fence, but it had a gate. And I think the parents must have known that April could get out of the gate, or they wouldn’t have told her not to go down to the river. Talk about an “attractive nuisance.”
@Ukulele Ike: Um, there’s a Subway in Inverness. Another example of America destroying international cuisine.
@Anonyminimouse: Thank You! This is the reference I was looking for!
@Activist 1234: You are very welcome! And those coworkers do sound…interesting.
Friday’s Mary Worth is better than anything Baja could come up with.
MW: The minds of some of us, and by “some of us” I mean “me,” might have “drifted off” a little more in the direction of the more challenging positions in the Kama Sutra.
@191 Sequitur: When you’re right, you’re right.